Often I was shown by random youths images of violence and Chechen troop action y mobile phone, although most of the young men who were trying to talk to me never took part in the action, they may have seen or experienced the violence and action first hand.
So even though the refugees were escaping the trouble in their homeland they were quite proud to show for example: the rocketing of a civillian car in the mountains of chechnya, telling me profundly that it contained Russian perssonell only. For me I couldnt see that, It could have been Russian civillian refugees or journalists escaping for all I knew; there was a ceartain glee in the faces of the refugees as they showed me these images, leaving a contridiction and a bad taste in my mouth.
Does violence breed violence and hatred breed hatred? or is it always there showing itself in blind. Nationalism on both sides,.
Of course I saw Chechen NGO magazines showing the bodies of tortured young men and women from the 2nd Chechen War to the present Mafia state, and of course we see the TV footage of the anniversary of Beslan and the Theatre sieze on the Russian Channels.
Which is truth, which is propaganda or do they both blur?...in the end maybe its the images we see most of that pertain our truth, and then it must be the Russian and Western media because I can only imagine that unless one visits the refugee camps In Poland etc or is working with Chechen and Russian NGO's in the Caucusses' we don't often see their view of the situation,their impressions and anger, their images of the violence.
The old cliche of war: 'the winners always write history'seems to still be justified at least in the Russian-Caucasus conflicts.
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